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The Irsay Dahle Outstanding Graduate Student Award recipient for 2017 is Vincent Crowley. The award honors outstanding contributions by a senior graduate student in the department. The Irsay-Dahle Award is named in memory of two graduates of the department, Robert Irsay and Norman Dahle.

Sam Williamson this fall received the 6th Annual Lester and Betty Mitscher Prize for Excellence in Medicinal Chemistry. The late professor Mitscher and his wife Betty (she is pictured with Williamson) established the award in 2011 to honor excellence in completion of Ph.D. requirements.

Graduate student Jacob Sorrentino (pictured with Interim Chair Robert Hanzlik), this fall received the Dr. Gregory L. and Frances L. Lauver Medicinal Chemistry Scholarship. The award is presented to the outstanding first-year graduate student in the department.

Our newest group of graduate students have come from Oregon, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania and Kentucky to study at the Department of Medicinal Chemistry.

The Department of Medicinal Chemistry welcomes new faculty member Assistant Professor Dr. Mark Farrell this fall.

Members of the Blake Peterson and Tom Prisinzano research groups joined in the world-wide celebration of PI Day on March 14. Pi is the symbol used in mathematics to represent a constant — the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter — which is approximately 3.14159.

The Integrated Science Building and Student Union is scheduled for completion in 2018. The building will provide a balance between teaching and research with new classrooms and new research laboratories in the life sciences and materials science, such as medicinal chemistry.

Medicinal Chemistry alumni, such as Anthony Romero who earned his Ph.D. in 2004 under the direction of Professor emeritus Gary Grunewald, return to share their research experiences.

The Department of Medicinal Chemistry is located on two floors in Malott Hall on the beautiful KU campus, with additional facilities in the newly-constructed Multidisciplinary Research Building (MRB) and the Structural Biology Center (SBC) on KU's West Campus. Currently composed of twelve full-time faculty members, approximately forty graduate students, and about 30 postdoctoral fellows, the department offers a stimulating environment for state-of-the-art research.

Visitors are often impressed by the camaraderie and sharing of interests that permeate the department. The breadth of possibilities in medicinal chemistry is also enhanced by the department's proximity to the rest of the Kansas School of Pharmacy, including the Departments of Pharmacology and Toxicology, and Pharmaceutical Chemistry.

Other neighbors in Malott and the adjoining Haworth Hall include the Chemistry, and Molecular Biosciences Departments. Active research collaborations and common graduate courses eliminate barriers and create a thriving scientific community at the University of Kansas.

KU medicinal chemistry graduates are widely employed, and their success has contributed to the high esteem in which the department is held on both national and international levels. Kansas Ph.D.'s hold important positions in the pharmaceutical and agrichemical industries (at Eli Lilly, Abbott, Warner-Lambert, and Pfizer, to name a few) and are professors at such highly regarded institutions as the University of California at San Francisco, Boston University, Minnesota, and Ohio State.

The editor and two of the four senior editors of the Journal of Medicinal Chemistry obtained their Ph.D. degrees with faculty members of the KU Medicinal Chemistry department, and many graduates currently serve as chair of their respective departments or divisions.